Texas Tabernacle by Jeff Clark

The Texas Tabernacle contains writings and photos about the people and history of the Palo Pinto River and the Leon River Country, Eastland, Palo Pinto and Stephens County, maybe old friends and detours that will likely occur along the way.
I like to look for the old things...events that happened, or maybe should have. Listen to what they have to say.

Everything Matters

Zim's Bottling of Strawn

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Dodson Prairie Dances

Tie Old Country to New

By Jeff Clark

There’s a
scene in the movie “Titanic” about the fabled luxury ship’s fateful date with
destiny. The elderly woman in the film tells the story of her own voyage that
tragic night. She looks off across the waves many decades later, visions of a luxurious
whirling ballroom filled with dancing couples coming brightly back into view
inside her memory, inside her words. She makes us see it too. We are
transported.

I met with 95-years-young Lenora
Teichman Boyd last week. I like it when someone I’m interviewing says, “I can
only tell you what happened up until the 1940s.”

I’m wanting to learn about the monthly
Dodson Prairie dances, held about six miles west of Palo Pinto, the town. They
started just after 1910. Lenora is home from the hospital, from rehab after
back surgery to relieve constant pain. She’s sitting in a recliner, enjoying
the unseasonably warm December day. I pull up a chair.

“They had
the dances right out there.” She’s pointing out the window south and a little
east behind this house. The closest public building that direction is in Strawn
or maybe Mingus many miles away. But Lenora sees the old dance hall just
outside, about fifty yards away. She starts talking, teaching. She makes me see
it too.

Dodson Prairie really was in 1900 –
a prairie, I mean. There might be an occasional small stand of oaks out there,
she told me. Mostly one saw grass, as high as a horse’s belly. The flat prairie
is today covered in cedar and mesquite, flat earth loping west until the ground
erupts skyward into mountains, cleaved in two by Metcalf Gap. Lenora told me
that those early farmers would burn their fields back each year, to invite
fresh grass in the spring. The Comanche did the same, during their turn on this
land.

Dodson Prairie was and is a German
settlement. Folks worked hard, mostly farming, raising stock. Lenora’s Teichmann
Family arrived in 1900 from the Schulenberg-Weimar area (before that, from Germany in
1868, landing at Galveston).
They’ve been hard at it in PaloPintoCounty
ever since.

Once a
month area families gave a dance, a get together. There was a public wagon road
when this all got started, leading in from the west. That road is gone, though Teichmann Road
remains. Lenora keeps talking.

It’s a black dark Saturday night on
the Texas
prairie. Coal oil lamps paint pale orange light onto the dusty ground outside
Dutch Hall’s double doors. Saddled horses and mules are tied outside. The creak
of wagons pulled by teams approach from the west, puncturing the stark silence
of this bone cold December. Kids hop out and meet their friends, promise moms
they’ll stay close, then run off to play. “There was a bed in one corner of the
hall,” Lenora told me, “where babies could sleep.”

Dutch Hall was a tall community
building made of overlapping frame lumber. It might’ve been 30 by 50 feet,
though lonely brown foundation stones and a few wooden pilings are all that
remain. Dutch Hall was used for dances, lodge meetings, and other community
get-togethers. Night school for adults happened here. People came from all over
for those Dodson Prairie dances – from Thurber, Mingus, Gordon, Palo Pinto, even
the country across the Gap west toward Caddo.

We start to hear painfully brittle
sounds inside the wood-heated hall – trumpets, sousaphones, a bass drum, and fiddle
strings all looking inside the growing cacophony for a key they can all agree
on. Finally, the band starts playing and the silent prairie comes to life with the
joyous dancing, stomping and hand-clapping of hard-working farm families,
taking a break from their tough frontier.

Married couples and still-shopping
young singles answer his call, with doe-see-does, and promenade rights. That
morning’s broken plow and the calf that ran away fade in importance to these
farmers and their wives.

Lenora’s father C. A. “Charlie”
Teichmann led the Dodson Prairie Band. He taught friends and relatives to play
brass instruments, and in one case a drum. At midnight, the wooden dance floor is cleared and large
tables are spread deep with fine native foods prepared by the Prairie’s
Germanic mothers and maidens. Families gather into Community here, from the
oldest great grandmothers to the youngest newborns, rock fences built to keep
in cattle, not to keep people out.

Dodson Prairie families were in
many cases only one generation removed from their European homelands. The Herman
Riebe family came here along with Joseph and Carl Teichmann, then the
Ankenbauers, Bergers, Beyers, Dreitners, Holubs, Kainer, Kaspers, Nowaks,
Popps, Schlinders, Telchiks, Thiels, and others.

One time “wild cowboys” interrupted the dance’s
fun after one too many snort from the bottle. Poor planning on their part became
apparent as lawmen were in attendance. The offenders were congratulated, then handcuffed
to oak trees outside until morning. As the years progressed, fiddles, guitars
and banjos replaced the brass-centric nature of Teichmann’s original Dodson
Prairie Band.

I asked Lenora about moonshine,
knowing it flowed liberally (I’m sorry, “freely”) to the south of here. “There
was no moonshine,” she tells me, and I believe her. “Well, there might have
been wine,” she finally admitted, these being upstanding Germans after all. I’d
been told elsewhere that no one partook inside. During breaks men might wander
outside for some light inebriation, I mean conversation. Many of these German
families had their own small vineyards at home, home grown mixed with wild
grapes from Lake Creek thickets down the hill. Do the math.

When the dances were over late on
star-speckled nights, Lenora’s family would walk through the dark about a
quarter mile to their home. Lenora remembers being carried. She couldn’t have
been more than three. Lenora remembers.

“Was
downtown Dodson Prairie right here back then?”

“No, it was
spread out. St. Boniface was to our south. The first schoolhouse to the south
of that, then the new schoolhouse was built north of the church. Over toward Highway
180 there was a cotton gin, west side of the road. Past that fell the store, the
post office inside. The Poseidon post office. And a filling station. The county
farm (poor farm) on the east, but that came later.”

The Teichman
Family (the second “N” dropped through the years) came from Austria and Germany to Galveston, then to central
Texas. They
must’ve scored down there, because they bought two full sections of land when
they reached this prairie. They paid between $2.50 and $4 an acre.

“Why did
they buy here?” I asked.

“Because it
was for sale,” Lenora answers.

It might have been because the
black soil at Dodson Prairie mirrors that found where the Teichmans farmed down
south, her son Charlie later tells me. Clearing these wide fields of rock, they
built stacked, drift rock fences by hand. The two fences I saw to the southeast
were two to three feet thick. A vintage photo shows another farther east rising
in height above a horse’s head.

Dances
moved to the “new” schoolhouse around 1950s. They occurred off and on there until
four or five years ago. The bands finally got too expensive.

When Lenora
was born in 1915 Woodrow Wilson was president. The Ranger oil boom was still
two years in the future. Dodson Prairie was a thriving, peopled settlement.

Back to
that German factor I mentioned earlier. Son Charlie and his friend Ann kindly loaded
me in their pickup to show me around the Prairie. I’d made a quick tour before,
not finding a lot. I wasn’t looking close enough.

Though
their early houses were mere box houses (no internal framing), both original
Teichman brother’s homes are still standing. From around 1900. One is being
lived in, standing in proud testimony to the hard labor and attention to
quality that these men and women nailed into place. The old school house, the
new school, several thick rock walls, the church, and several county poor farm
buildings are all standing. Those Germans built straight and true, though their
local population continues to wane.

Teichmann
and Schoolhouse Roads are two of the few roads in this area one can still
travel down and read many of the same family names that settled that land 100
years ago. This too, is changing. If you stand respectfully in a quiet spot out
Dodson Prairie way, I have to believe the old dance is still being held.
Couples twirl, long lost love still beating hard and true. Invisible dance
floors and midnight dance callers
invite the distant past into the prayed-for future. If you stand quietly. If
you believe.

Special thanks to Lenora Teichman Boyd,
Charlie Boyd, Ann Mixon and Gloria Holub. Jeff may be reached at jdclark3312@aol.com.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

I went to see ChrystalFalls
last Friday. Several had pointed me in her direction, once they learned I was
interested in Tudor Road,
in the now-vanished Tudor-Gourdneck Community.

Mrs. Falls was born a Jackson in 1917, at the
foot of CountyKnob, a landmark mountain hugging the
eastern boundary of EastlandCounty. Her older brothers
walked to the TudorSchool all the way from
the Knob. Her daddy later bought a closer place, on Tudor Road when she was six-years-old. He
didn’t want six-year-old Chrystal to have to cross the creek, on her way to
school.

She thinks the Tudors or Mitchells might
have owned their farm first. You remember me telling you about that fine rock
cellar at the turn in the road? That cellar was already there when they moved
in. As was the house, also still standing.

The one room TudorSchool
sat by the cemetery, opening its one door as far back as the 1870s. Some called
the place Gourdneck, don’t ask me why. The school cistern, located off the
corner of the school building, still waits out there in the woods. Mrs. Falls
attended first through sixth grade, the year the school closed down, the first
year of the Great Depression for most – 1929.

Her family shopped in Strawn and
Mingus. Mrs. Falls’ mom liked cornbread and there was a corn mill in Mingus at
the time. They shopped for groceries at Watson Brothers in Strawn. That was an
all-day trip back then.

Mrs. Falls was the only student in Tudor’s
first grade. There was another girl in third grade. Miss Vivian was her
teacher. Also Walter Michell’s wife, Mabell. She was of the Pope Family.

That old wooden building hosted school
during the week. Saturdays were for Easter egg hunts, picnics sometimes. Sunday
was for church. Fourth of July was ice cream, turned by hand in a wooden ice
cream freezer – one of her favorite days, she recalled with a smile. Everyone
from the community was there –maybe fifty, maybe 100. Mrs. Falls graduated from
StrawnHigh School.

Whenever there was a Tudor Community church
revival, the minister stayed at the Jackson
house (her mom cooked). Her Dad was a Baptist. Tudor Road used to continue on straight
into Strawn, she said. I’d wondered if maybe it ended at Peter Davidson’s first
place, between Strawn and Thurber (neither town was there in 1856, back when he
first landed on the banks of Palo Pinto Creek).

Mrs. Falls dad was Willie Jackson
(William Henry Harrison Jackson), who married Nora Gailey. Mr. Jackson was a
fine man, one of four children.

Willie’s dad abandoned the family when the boy was small, up
in Arkansas.
Just up and left. Eventually those four kids were taken away from their mom by
some judge. Willie remembered seeing his mother sob as the kids were removed
from their home.

So this is the part I was telling you
about, when someone you’ve never met teaches you something. Just like he’s
standing right there in front of you. Willie talked about being hungry as a
child. You don’t hear that from folks, not in this country. Not today. He never
forgot that. But listen to this.

After the judge took Willie from his
mom (and his siblings, who were separated), he ended up with the Vaught Family
in Desdemona. I’m not sure if Willie was adopted or just taken in. They worked
him like a slave, beat him even. This became his life, for awhile. One Saturday
that family hooked up their wagon to go to town, gave him a long list of chores
to do “or you know what’ll happen to you”. Then they left.

Eleven-year-old Willie took off,
escaped, wading up the middle of Hog Creek so they couldn’t track him in the
water. The Vaughts later seined their tank, thinking maybe he’d drowned himself.
Think about that for a minute.

Willie went up the creek, then took
off north and a little east, cross country, through the brush. After many, many
miles of up and down valleys and desolate wild country, he ended up at the Gailey Place, east
of Tudor Road, south
of the TudorSchool. Willie had never seen the
Gaileys before in his life.

He knocked on the Gailey’s front
door. Grandma came to the door. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Can I do some work?” The
Gaileys fed him, took him in, and raised him like one of their own. Willie
worshipped Grandma Ada Gailey, the only mother he’d ever known, since being
taken from his own mom’s wing so young. Willie lived in the Gailey house with
the kids. He was the one who wrote out the verse that’s on Grandma Gailey’s
tombstone in TudorCemetery: “She was a kind
and affectionate wife, mother and a friend to all.”

The Vaughts didn’t find Willie until
many years later. Grandpa Gailey told them they’d better just leave the boy be.
That struggle made Willie a better man.

As an adult, Willie rode to work on
horseback at the Number One Thurber mine, digging coal. He was devastated when
the mines shut down. There’s a picture of the Number One mine in the Thurber
museum, I’m told.

Willie also farmed and ranched. The
family planted a garden – did okay. “We were never hungry. Daddy saw to that.
He’d never let that happen,” Mrs. Falls wanted me to know. They didn’t have
electricity down Tudor way until after she married.

Some names I heard, but don’t yet
know. Dutch and Walter Mitchell (brothers), the Popes, the Gaileys (Mrs. Falls’
mom Nora was the oldest).

Mrs. Falls moved away when she was 24
(marrying GeorgeFalls). They traveled all over the world,
after a childhood of staying close to home. The Falls’ trip to the Holy Land was a “trip of a lifetime,” she told me.

Times are hard right now, in Texas, all over really.
Picking up the newspaper, watching the evening news can be the toughest part of
the day. There was a time, not so long ago, when survival grew from the sweat
of one’s brow. When folks had problems, they prayed, usually together. When young
Willie Jackson showed up hungry, what he asked for was work.

“We were never hungry. Daddy saw to
that.”

I hope things are good with you. Please take care.

Jeff Clark is the author of "Tabernacle – The Back Road to Alameda and Cheaney," writes about lost Texas places and
characters for Texas
newspapers, and is a senior citizens’ insurance agent in Central and West Texas. To pass along story tips, please email jdclark3312@aol.com.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

There's a
depression heading our way. That's what the newspapers tell us. The economic
kind. Here in Weatherford. Nibbling around the edges of our little town -
taking its first taste.

Millions
of everywhere-but-here folks have lost their jobs already. Swept away by the
same tidal wave. Whose shadow we don't yet see. Most in this nation, in this
town, live three paychecks from the abyss. It will frost my britches, if my parents
were right.

A family
doesn't need nice cars, a big house. You don't OWN anything. You can't DO
anything. Why, your father and I made do with so much less. We didn't have to
worry about tomorrow. We didn't have to.

Then a
little girl calls out to me. "I survived," she whispers. "So
must you."

That
young girl's childhood, remembered by her through a prism of almost eighty
years, haunts me this day. She was my storyteller. I didn't see it at the time.
I visited her home expecting a Great Depression story of hardship and woe. That
cup was handed back to me, overflowing. But in the midst of today's woe, her
small farm girl's smiling stories keep bubbling to my surface. In the swirl of
terrible suffering, humiliation, of death, there had been joy. I pull out my
notes from our visit. I listen to her words.

ParkerCounty Commissioners bought land for the CountyPoor Farm
in 1883. It operated until about 1946. The county still owns the site, about
three miles south of town. A few of its buildings, along with its lonely pauper
cemetery still wait out there.
Individuals and families deemed insolvent were "sentenced" to live
there, many decades ago. When neither family nor neighbors would take them in.
Many were old. Were infirm.

Pride
still governed our society back then. These folks weren't happy to be out
there. They weren't looking for a free ride. Weatherford resident Nila Bielss
Seale remembers those times as a girl. Remembers those people. Her parents, Mr.
and Mrs. Alvin Bielss were the Poor Farm's caretakers. Hired by the county from
the late 1920s through the early 1930s.

"It
was like a big home," she said. "All the people there were like aunts
and uncles. My mother and dad took care of them. They were doctor, nurse, and
psychologist".

The Poor
Farm consisted of two 160 acre tracts of land. The superintendent and his
family had a home out there. The house still stands, barely. There was a
barracks-like dormitory across the road from the family's house. Each Poor Farm
resident had a room off its center hallway. The dormitory had a large porch
across the front where the residents would often gather.

The Poor
Farm's large barn, smaller outbuildings, and a water trough inscribed by Nila's
daddy in 1923 also still remain. There's also a shack of a house off by itself,
being eaten alive by a tree, shared back then by a blind man and the farm's
Delco electrical system.

Joe C.
Moore was one of the early Parker County Commissioners. He reflected on the
court's thinking in starting the poor farm, in a Weatherford Weekly Herald
story September 21, 1911: "Editor: I desire to answer some of your
questions as to why the county poor farm was purchased, how used and what
revenue it produced. About 1881, soon after A. J. Hunter was elected county
judge, B.C. Tarkinton, Joe C. Moore, Frank Barnett and W. A. Massey were
commissioners. After an investigation, this court found that other counties had
farms that were a source of good revenue, a large savings to the taxpayers, and
a good thing in general."

Moore says there were then thirty-eight people on the county
indigent list who were each receiving $3 - $10 monthly. ParkerCounty
spent about $3,000 annually on its poor, back then. So the county bought this
320 acres, he said.

"George
Abbott and wife were employed to superintend the farm with instructions to feed
and clothe well all inmates of the farm, and to give each of the inmates a task
according to their fittedness or ability."

The farm
was free and clear of debt after only three years. The commissioners additionally
used jail inmates to work at the farm. They received credit against their
sentences.

All
thirty-eight paupers under the county's financial support were then notified of
the day and time to assemble, to be taken to the Poor Farm. Steaming Nazi
locomotives pulling wooden-slatted cattle cars pop into my imagination as I
write this. Though that's probably not fair. I'm sure some thought, in ParkerCounty
back then, these people must've brought it on themselves. They had it coming.

Apparently
only about half showed up, Mr. Moore tells us, "showing that the county
had been paying out money to those who had other means of support." No
such testing goes on today. Far as I know.

The Poor
Farm usually had between fourteen and twenty people living there at any one
time. Those that were able worked in the fields, gathered eggs, raised hogs and
cattle, milked or helped cook and clean back at the dormitory.

Aunt
Mary, one of the residents there, was a cook while the Bielss Family lived
there. The woman showed kindness to young Nila. "Aunt Mary made the best
tea cakes," she remembered. Once Nila's pet goat Billy, who followed Nila
everywhere, somehow got into Aunt Mary's room when the little girl was
visiting. Though Billy created quite a mess, Aunt Mary, known for her
organization and cleanliness, acted like nothing had happened.

Aunt Mary
grew tired in her later years and decided she was not going to help out around
the farm any longer. Her back was bothering her, she said. She could no longer
get around, she told some others. One afternoon, Nila's dad came up to the
dormitory's porch, where Aunt Mary was still feigning illness. He let a
harmless snake loose that promptly sought Aunt Mary out. Terrified of snakes,
she leapt from her chair and took off, promptly cured of her affliction.

"We
were almost totally self-sufficient," Nila said. "The people there
were very busy people. My mother and dad alternated each month in buying
groceries. Mother would get mad if the grocery bill was over twenty dollars for
the month (for about eighteen people). My dad butchered hogs after the first
cold spell and cured the meat. The cellar was full - the walls were lined with
fruits and vegetables my mother put up."

During
harvest season, when they would thresh the wheat, county commissioners would
pay people from Weatherford one dollar a day to work (during the Great
Depression). And people from town would come out, to help out - to get paid.
Nila's dad would salt meat and hang it from the rafters. When Poor Farm folks
became ill, her mother or dad would sit up all night with them.

Nila had
a horse as a little girl. The commissioners apparently had confiscated the
animal from someone, to stop its abuse. "The horse wasn't quite
right," she remembered. "He would be perfectly sweet and
normal, then all of the sudden just go crazy for a little bit." Nila loved
that horse. One day she was riding him up by the big barn, through some old
tree stumps. The horse had one of his episodes. Threw her through the air and
onto the ground. Her dad was nearby. Thank goodness. Made sure she was okay.
She remembers this part. He told her to get right back up on that horse. So she
did.

The Poor
Farm owned a few other horses to pull the plows and wagons, even a couple of
Percherons at one point. Nila remembers her dad being partial to mules. These
teams would take corn to the gin in Granbury in a wagon, and would help harvest
the wheat. When it was ready.

Nila's
father often woke up at 3 a.m.
to begin his endless work around the farm. Near the end, most of the farm's
residents were advanced in age. Were not a lot of help.
"Daddy liked to whistle," Nila told me. "He was known for that.
You could hear him, even at three in the morning, out there whistling." He
was a deacon in the local church, where her mom taught Sunday School and played
the piano. Before they were married, Mr. Bielss had to sell his beloved horse
Penny. He needed the money. He wanted a proper wedding ring. He sacrificed.

Nila's
folks were good people, were hard workers. Nobody helped them out much except
for Moses, Mr. Taylor, and sometimes Aunt Mary. "Mr. Taylor, who was
blind, would want to help out more, but we were always afraid for him, when he
got around the big saw," Nila told me. He was a nice man, she said. Mr. Taylor.

Nila remembers
her family having a small record player. One day she and her brother Eldon were
playing "He'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" so loud that her mother
could hear it down the hill. They got into a storm of trouble. Before
electricity was common, the farm had a Delco unit powered by a windmill to run
a few things, like the single bulbs that hung from a few of the ceilings. The
Delco was located in same little house that Mr. Taylor lived in. The blind
gentleman.

Poor Farm
residents washed their clothes in big black number five wash pots. The man
named Moses kept pecans in a Maxwell Coffee can. He cut those pecans into
laser-perfect halves. Moses did. Moses was paralyzed on one side. Had a peg leg
that he made himself.

Nila told
me about Mrs. Baker, who'd been addled after being struck by lightning. It
stayed with her. Mrs. Baker. Whenever a storm approached, Nila's parents had to
comfort her fears.

Nila told
tales of a happy childhood at the farm. At the Poor Farm. Where her parents
took care of so many. Nila never lacked for anything, she wanted me to know.
Nila bottle fed her goats. Had a menagerie of livestock to keep her
entertained. She listened to Little Orphan Annie on the family's radio.

Around
1946 the dormitory building where the residents lived was moved to the 100
block of Throckmorton in Weatherford. It there served as a home for the aged.
The move was the end of the true operation of the Poor Farm. The building was
later relocated to Rusk Street,
where it still stands.
I drive past it. Often. Though I've never ventured up to it. Wouldn't be
polite.
After World War II, the federal and state governments increased social services
for the poor and the elderly. For the nation. Not just ParkerCounty.

The Poor
Farm pauper cemetery still sleeps off in the woods. The place was forgotten
until the early 1980s, rediscovered by a group of hunters. It appeared to have
about forty adult graves. And one child's grave. No one knows for sure.

The
earliest documented burial was 1904. The lonely site had no fence. At that time
the county commissioners were considering selling the farm. The Parker County
Historical Commission persuaded commissioners to let them restore the dignity
of the cemetery. This, they did.

Later in
1986 a historic marker was awarded by the state, now visible from Tin Top Road. A
right-of-way was established from Tin Top to the cemetery. The Parker County
Abandoned Cemetery Association continues to maintain the cemetery, with the
help of donations. They do this, to this day.

I need to
finish this story. There's much to do. To prepare for. I feel nauseous. Unsure.

I need a
snake to scare me off this porch.

One man
living at the Poor Farm was insistent that he not end up in the pauper
cemetery. When the time came, Mr. Bielss buried him off in the woods. Wayne
Thompson, who ran a dairy on the property in the 1950s remembers three lone
graves off together near a lone tree, about a half mile away. This man's
presumed to be one of the three. But I'm not sure.

J. G.
Godley's death was particularly tragic. Godley died of suicide November 11, 1929. Nila
recalls that Godley was once a wealthy man (related to the family that started
the Godley community to our south). He was divorced, was 87 at the time of his
passing. He apparently squandered his fortune and died a pauper at the farm. He
was always very bitter and depressed, Nila told me. Many times he pleaded with
her dad to kill him.
One morning the Bielss Family was having breakfast. Before sunrise. The cows
down the hill started bawling. Her dad got his lantern. Said he'd better go
check on what was wrong. On what was the matter.

Mr.
Godley had cut his throat inside the farm's two hole privy. In the Poor Farm's
out house. He lay dead on the floor. The county death certificate lists no relatives
and no birthdate. The November 12, 1929
Daily Herald obituary shows one daughter in Austin. I never found her.

Nila
remembers Mr. Godley being buried outside the paupers' cemetery fence by her
father. County records show his final resting place as OaklandCemetery,
in an unmarked grave. Stories about Mr. Godley conflict around this town, even
today. I believe that little girl, though bottom line, Mr. Godley is lost as
well.

The Poor
Farm Cemetery has one of the highest ratios of unmarked graves in ParkerCounty.
Out forty known graves, only one had a marked headstone. There is a newer
granite marker listing the people who died at the farm, but were buried in
other locations. The Abandoned Cemetery Association did that.

Association
members Mary Kemp and Billie Bell spent long hours going through records trying
to learn the names of those interred at this cemetery. Mary helped me with this
story. Nila was its ringside witness.

I don't
know how this story comes out. The Poor Farm. ParkerCounty.
The American nation writhing in doubt and uncertainty. Today's headlines could
be an echo to that earlier time.

We could
be in for the surprise of our lives.

The Poor
Farm woods south of Weatherford probably hold this nation's answer. The souls
in that graveyard. The whispers in those trees.Those times seem so foreign.
Listening to that little girl. To the slip-sliding past. Our future's out
there. A cradled secret, walking around in the faded front overalls pocket of
another time. But those folks aren't talking. Not today. Not to me.

Jeff Clark is the author of "Tabernacle - The Back Road to Alameda and
Cheaney," writes about lost Texas
places and characters for Texas
newspapers, and is a senior citizens' insurance agent in Central and West Texas. To pass along story tips, please email jdclark3312@aol.com.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

BlackMount PleasantSchool Forges

Two Communities Into One

By Jeff Clark

Race riots may be
coming to Weatherford.

That was the talk
around town. Images of angry police dogs, fire hoses and bloodied protestors across
the Deep South paraded across ParkerCountyTV sets in the early
1960s. Some feared a repeat performance here.

When Weatherford
schools opened that first 1963 day of integration, all was quiet. The reasons
are both simple, and complex.

Our mystery begins
in church. Two years after the Civil War ended, blacks organized the Prince
Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church on Oak Street. This oldest “still in business”
church in Weatherford was named after the Rev. A. Bartlett “Bart” Prince, its
first elder (as is Prince Street,
near the first black public school). The church’s building went up in 1871, and
was modified in 1912.

The “CME” sign in front meant “Colored Methodist
Episcopal” until the 1960s, when it changed to ChristianMethodistChurch. It’s believed to
be the second oldest CME church in
the nation. There’s no Texas Historical Marker here.

Within this pioneer
church’s walls, black students received their first education, until the county
built them a schoolhouse. Smythe’s 1877 “Historical Sketch of Parker County” lists
thirty-seven county schools that year, each tied to a geographic “community”,
save one: School No. 33 – The Weatherford Colored School. Seymour Simpkins
taught thirty-nine “colored” students. Prince Memorial pillars Willis Pickard,
Rev. Henry Johnson and Rev. Prince served as trustees.

The “ColoredSchool” gets mentioned in the newspaper
off and on down through the years. In 1887, land just south of West Oak and
west of Prince was purchased for $200, its schoolhouse built in 1917. A brick
school house replaced that structure in 1927. Today that forgotten brick
schoolhouse stands proudly among the weeds.

The September 8, 1933 Weatherford Democrat lists five ward
schools that year, plus the “ColoredSchool”. Tillie Woods was
principal and Ella Varnel was the teacher. The “ColoredSchool”
taught Cub Young, who pitched against Satchell Paige in the Negro Baseball League.
Weatherford’s Negro League team played where WeatherfordHigh School
is now.

Leonard Smith
entered first grade at Mount Pleasant
in 1939, three years after it was renamed the Mount PleasantSchool.
The school’s two classrooms taught nine grades then.

Black and white
kids played baseball together, had rock fights, and cut up like children still
do. Raymond George and some of his white friends walked to school together in
the late 1940s. When they reached the StanleySchool,
the white boys went inside. Raymond kept walking.

“That’s just the
way it was,” he said.

Mount Pleasant was a two room school, several
grades in each classroom. Florine Roddy taught in the southern room, when Raymond
was a student. The northern classroom was Lucille Rucker’s. Outside sat two
outhouses and a water well whose pipe led over a trough. “One kid pumped while another
drank,” Raymond told me.

Raymond remembers
there being about fifty students, though that number swelled when migratory
families came to town with the railroad or picking cotton. Raymond’s teachers (1946-1953)
included Ella Varnell, Lucille Rucker and Mrs. Roddy.

“Lucille Rucker
built the foundation beneath those black kids’ sense of respect,” Raymond said,
“respect for others and for themselves.” Not only was she a good teacher, she
was highly regarded by whites and blacks alike. Rucker made the boys play out
back and the girls play out front during recess. “She taught us to treat the
girls like ladies. Because of her, my generation of students stayed married,
kept one job our whole lives, and successfully retired from those same jobs.”
Still, when Mount Pleasant
closed, Mrs. Rucker was forced to do odd jobs to survive. “She wasn’t taken
care of,” he reflected sadly.

Wilson Hall was
added to the northwest edge of the Mount
Pleasant campus around 1944. Named after Superintendent
Leonard B. Wilson, it was a barracks-like building used for classes and
assemblies, with a stage on its west side.

Mount Pleasant sits high atop the western
skyline of Weatherford, looking down on the Courthouse to its east. Below its
majestic perch, blight stares back from where working black families once
raised families. “Wood-burning stoves sat in the corners of each classroom,”
Charlie Simmons told me, “replaced by gas heaters.” Flue holes still puncture
the school’s two chimneys.

Each large
classroom had wood floors and large windows along two walls. One can see
daylight looking up through fourteen foot ceilings to the sky. “These
classrooms were filled with little desks,” Charlie told me. “There were kids
everywhere.”

“Every morning all
the kids would walk out here, to the flag pole,” he said. “Say their Pledge of
Allegiance and sing a patriotic song.” The flag pole base remains. He showed me
where the swings were, the slide, the concrete front porch to Wilson Hall. “We
had more fun than you can shake a stick at.”

The schoolhouse road
entered from Prince Street,
rising up the hill then circling the school. The old schoolhouse sits on
private property, contiguous to LoveStreetPark
on its west.

This was a time of
separate white and black drinking fountains in our city. Blacks couldn’t enter
white restaurants (unless they worked there) or attend most theaters. Blacks
could buy Texas Theater tickets, as long as they sat in the balcony. Raymond
remembers walking through the Texas Café to the kitchen out back as a little
boy, wanting to spin the bar stools around. He couldn’t since the place was whites
only.

Weatherford had black
churches, a black tabernacle, and a two-story black Masonic Lodge on Fort Worth Highway, east
of the courthouse. There were few black businesses.

If black students
aspired to go to high school, they were on their own. Raymond and Leonard went
to Fort Worth’s
I. M. Terrell High School. Most of these kids didn’t have bikes, much less cars
to make the thirty-one mile journey each way.

Raymond’s dad John
Lorenzo “J. L.” George stepped up between 1953 – 1963. He left his upholstery
shop twice a day to drive black students to Cowtown in his Ford station wagon at
his own expense. Local businessmen later chipped in to buy gas. When J. L’s car
got too crowded, a bus was finally supplied. J. L. spent five hours a day toting
school kids, losing this time at his store.

Mitchell Rucker
was another pillar of the black community here, born in 1899. “He was respected
by the white community,” Raymond told me, “but held at a distance.” In the white
community, Rucker was employed at the M & F Bank as a janitor. In the black
community, he was superintendent at Prince Memorial for over fifty years, taught
classes to Senior Citizens for the WPA in 1944, taught soldiers at CampWolters
and was a board member at TexasCollege in Tyler for forty years.
Rucker was one of the main conduits between Weatherford’s white and black
communities.

“Pappa Ike”
Simmons was another black leader. He attended school at Prince Memorial, before
Mount Pleasant
was built. “Pappa Ike was more of a politician – he knew everybody, running
that mouth 100 miles an hour,” Charlie told me. Ike and brother “Uncle Charlie
Simmons” each raised families off shining shoes at the Palace or Texas theaters and at
barber shops.

Many prominent white
families had black nannies, butlers, and groundskeepers. There was a parallel
but unseen black society here, one from which trusted black men like Rucker,
Pappa Ike and J. L. George could communicate informally with the white
establishment.

Equally important,
several white leaders reached out to the black community – Jack Borden, Borden
Seaberry, the Cotton Family, and James and Dorothy Doss, among a few others. Respected
whites and blacks interacted, albeit at a distance. Though not treated equally
by any means, attacking one group would’ve meant attacking their own.

Mary Kemp
remembers when the integration meetings took place in the third floor study
hall of the old WeatherfordHigh School. “It was a
great time for all, very peaceful. I remember thinking, ‘This is a great
historical time.”

Charlie Simmons
was one of the first black students at WeatherfordHigh School
in 1963. He did well, as hundreds of other black students had before, riding atop
the shoulders of Mount Pleasant’s
teachers and black leaders. “It was a simple transition,” he said. “Nothing
happened.”

This would be
another “happily ever after” Weatherford story, save one omission. Unlike so
much of this great town’s heritage, the Mount PleasantSchool
hasn’t been added to the roll call of hallowed historic touchstone sites in our
town.

Raymond George tried
to ignite a movement to get Mount
Pleasant a historical marker some years back, maybe
have the site turned into a museum or park. The Mount PleasantSchool
site and several surrounding acres can be accessed from the city’s LoveStreetPark and four city streets.
The old school’s roof stopped turning back the rain many years ago. This
historic place is not long for the world.

The Mount PleasantSchool marks a chapter in Weatherford’s
history where two communities became one. Unlike much of the South, this town
pulled it off peacefully and with respect. As I put my camera back in its case,
I noticed graffiti on the wall of Miss Rucker’s last classroom:

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

KenFalls
grew up in the Lone Cedar – Merriman area. His family has solid EastlandCounty roots going back to the 1800s.
More importantly (at least to me), Ken worked for many years as a pumper for
oil companies. His laser-like interest in the study of American Indian cultures
and artifacts, combined with a job that took him onto private property all over
the region, destined Ken to be the Alameda
– Cheaney area’s greatest expert on Native societies. Ken’s lifetime of field
work lays a solid foundation for the future study of prehistoric Alameda and Cheaney.

When the whole Indian thing came up,
Ken counseled that I should keep an open mind. He knew I’d run across white
settler stories detailing long years of Indian – Anglo conflict. He also knew
more than one flavor of Indian had lived in the LeonRiverValley.

Ken has a twisted sense of humor,
once you get to know him. Most of Ken’s best stories I can’t include, knowing
mom will read this someday. During his decades as a pumper, stomping around the
pastures and creek beds of rural EastlandCounty, Ken

discovered
artifacts. He was able to construct an important map detailing twenty-five
Native American camps within the county, based upon these discoveries. Ken
catalogued what he found through the years, creating a rich historical Native
American tapestry fueling this chapter.

To protect the integrity of those
sites, many of which are still relatively undisturbed, their locations are only
described in general terms. They all fall with the “Alameda – Cheaney Box” detailed on Map I,
however. Rather than recite a long list of amateur finds by Ken and others, I
include only those which document certain time periods and cultures.

Sparse archeological study in EastlandCounty flows from little invasive land
development and a suspicion by local landowners that control of their hard-won
real estate holdings might pass from their hands. Except for some sporadic
surface collection by deer hunters or pre-WWII school kids, whatever the Indians
left out there, still awaits collection and interpretation.

Alameda – Cheaney Native peoples date to Clovis era man, 13,000 years ago. He walked the LeonRiverValley in fairly large
numbers. Though rough country, these hillsides supplied water, game and because
of the thickness (then) of the Texas Cross Timbers, offered refuge from other
tribes.

The dense Cross
Timbers barrier was quite striking for westbound Anglo explorers who had just
crossed a wide open Blackland Prairie, covered with chest-high

native grasses. Most of these
travelers recorded this radical change, giving us first hand accounts of what
this country looked like. Randolph Marcy traveled this country extensively
when, saying, “At six different points where I have passed through [the Cross
Timbers], I have found it characterized by the same peculiarities; the trees,
consisting principally of post-oak and black-jack, standing at such intervals
that wagons

can’t without difficulty pass
between them in any direction. The soil is thin, sandy, and poorly watered.”

George Wilkins
Kendall with the Texan Santa Fe Expedition of 1841, called the Cross Timbers
"almost impenetrable" and "full of deep and almost impassable
gullies. The ground was covered with a heavy undergrowth of briers and thorn-bushes,
impenetrable even by mules, and these, with the black jacks and post oaks which
thickly studded the broken surface, had to be cut away, their removal only
showing, in bolder relief, the rough and jagged surface of the soil which had
given them existence and nourishment.”

Josiah Gregg
(1844) ascribed the forest’s density to fires, natural or started intentionally
by Indians. “Most of the timber appears to be kept small by the continual
inroads of the 'burning prairies for, being killed almost annually, it is
constantly replaced by scions of undergrowth; so that it becomes more and more
dense every reproduction. In some places, however, the oaks are of considerable
size, and able to withstand the conflagrations. The underwood is so matted in
many places with grape-vines, green-briars, etc., as to form almost
impenetrable 'roughs'.”

If a band of
Native peoples were looking for a place in which to disappear, EastlandCounty’s LeonRiverValley would have been hard to beat. The
northern end of the LeonRiver and its Colony
Creek tributary cuts through rougher terrain, more cut up with low mountains,
rock outcroppings, hollows, winding creeks and streams. As you move south down
the Leon,
getting closer to the mid-point of the Alameda
– Cheaney Box, the valley widens to a smooth, gentle swale. Cliffs resurface on
the western side of this valley (Reid Ridge), just above AlamedaCemetery,
continuing south to Nash Creek. Below
the AlamedaCemetery hill, ManskerLake
and the LeonRiver are within sight of each other on
a broad, flat delta studded by giant pecan trees.

The LeonRiver is punctuated by
several deep, rock bottomed “holes” where water would have stood for months
after rains ceased. Numerous springs (Duvall Springs, Young Springs, Winsett
Springs, Ellison Springs, McGough Springs, Nash Springs, Blackwell Springs, and
others) offered passing Native travelers cool, clear water during arid months.
Indians could hunt game that wandered up for a drink.

Many think of Central Texas as a land with plentiful lakes, reservoirs
and stock tanks. The vast majority of these are man-made, and those pretty
recently (1950s on). Before the impulse to impound runoff water for future use
began, large bodies of water like ManskerLake were rare.

Bill McGough
refers to Mansker’s waters as “the lake” from a distance of ten miles away as
late as the late mid-1800s. These peaceful waters were known to ancient

people, and were returned to often.
Its shorelines may have even been fought over, with the fallen dead buried in
the east-facing cliffs nearby (this Native gravesite long since desecrated).

Native peoples
visited ManskerLake in waves. People capable of
recording Native presence (French or Spanish explorers, Republic of Texas
soldiers, early ranching settlers) didn’t hit this broad area of Texas until the
mid-1700s. There are no known eyewitness sightings of Native Americans in our
specific EastlandCounty area recorded
until Big Foot Wallace explored just to our east in 1837. From that date until
1874 when the Indians disappeared to reservations or were killed (or driven
underground in at least one Cheaney case), few written accounts fail to mention
Native Americans, usually Comanches.

The natural food
basket that Natives sought was found in this stretch of the LeonRiverValley. The valley is filled with giant
pecan trees (“protein that won’t run away,” my new friend and Comanche
ethnologist Linda Pelon reminds). The presence of deer, large panthers and
bears are recorded by early settlers (McGough and Mrs. Jim Hart). Corn would
have grown in these fertile bottoms without the need of soil preparation. Older
interviewees report a greater presence of walnut trees than is found today.

Bison would have
been hard pressed to get into this rough-terrain valley in large numbers, though
McGough reports them seven miles to the west. Big Foot Wallace also reports
bison near present day Victor, ten miles to the southeast. Either site is well
within the known range of Indian hunting parties. Theoretically, the McGough
Springs

bison to the west of Alameda could
have been herded to the Reid Ridge cliff on the western side of Alameda, and
driven over its edge into the fast moving waters below (like Natives did at the
Bonfire Shelter in Val Verde County…a similar, seventy foot high cliff). The
writer was unable to access the Reid Ridge land, to explore this theory, though
the topography, archeology and the nearby presence of bison fit.

If
ManskerLake’s human clock started 13,000 years
ago, more than 600 succeeding generations of people could have lived here
during that period of time. Hunters and gatherers looking for food and water,
would have found a sure supply, unlike other inland Texas areas. We cannot know for sure “who
these Indians were”. We cannot give those peoples definite names, like we later
can the Comanches, at least not yet. Additional investigation could fill those
voids.

All
these “could have” theories would have remained conjecture. That’s where KenFalls
and others came to Alameda’s
rescue. Ken and I built a ladder of civilizations
together, driven only by the nature of artifacts found. Those artifacts become
markers for amazing periods of civilization in what is now sparsely settled
farmland. Additional hard work by citizens of the City of DeLeon corroborated our story.

DeLeon is a bustling town of 2,424 people, located 16 miles
south of Alameda.
Amateur and professional archeologists made tremendous progress putting their
Indian puzzle together. The preponderance of DeLeon’s Indians are thought to be
Wichita,
divided into the Waco
and the Tawakoni. Their culture was a mix of Caddo to the east,

and Great Plains Indians to the west. They farmed a little,
but made frequent hunting trips to the plains.

Indians
would have been on foot until the later arrival of the horse-borne Kiowa and
Comanche. The LeonRiver bottom, cleared of
underbrush by seasonal flooding, would have been a clear thoroughfare to camps
above and below Alameda
and DeLeon. The water would have drawn game, just as it drew human life.

If Natives
preceding the Comanches also used smoke signals, smaller hilltop smoke sites
along its course could have reached the major Jameson Peak and Ranger Hill
regional smoke sites easily (a hilltop above Jim Neal Creek, the Schmick Ridge
below Alameda and the Staff (“Round”) Mountain sites all fit subsidiary smoke
signaling location profiles. Physical evidence was found at two of these sites.

Linda
told me to look for Indian footprints along paths of least resistance, when we
first met. She said that many settler roads (even a few highways) follow
prehistoric paths created by Native peoples. Plotting Mr. Falls findings, then
cross-referencing his work with the earliest known detailed road maps of EastlandCounty (1888 and 1917), yielded a
surprising breakthrough.

A north-south
roadway recorded on a 1917 U.S. Soil Conservation Map implies an ancient
roadway connecting several Indian campsites, dating from the Archaic Era, 8,000
years ago. That same route was widely used as a public road until late 1878 by
settlers and travelers, when a new county road was built to its east, on higher
ground. This Old Alameda Road
forms the spine of much of this region’s early history, though it is now
largely invisible.

Bill McGough
(1859) places the intersection of the two overland Comanche War Trails a mile
and a half east of Desdemona, beneath the most important Native regional
mountain landmark, JamesonPeak. This seems to be
roughly corroborated by the 1839 “Map of Texas Compiled from Surveys on record
in the General Land Office of the Republic”, by Richard S. Hunt and Jesse F
Randel. The 1839 map shows a Y intersection that the Alameda – Cheaney Box lies completely within.
It is likely the Comanches were not the first to travel this well-defined
migration path, as earlier peoples were also always on the move. This
intersection is eight miles from ManskerLake, if McGough is
correct. The 1839 map plots it farther west.

The writer will
only identify the more stirring marker artifacts found, mostly arrowheads,
spear points and mano/metates, that suggest the timelines of the peoples who
left them behind. This discussion is informed by the extensive archeological
study undertaken around DeLeon.

The Clovis Culture of Paleo-Indian
presence begins with two Clovis points, found
inside the Alameda
– Cheaney Box. Nearby Native fire pits have not been carbon dated. Alameda’s Clovis Man
lived for around 800 years, beginning 13,000 years ago. These Clovis
points were found near the Rock Ledge Shelter Camp.

Clovis
points were used on spears, lances and darts – weapons used to “stab” their
prey, not be thrown or shot. These first Paleo-American Stage Indians hunted
the now-extinct camel, the prehistoric horse, four-horned antelope, mastodon
and the

mammoth, though the mastodon is the
only ancient megafauna whose remains have been found in this valley (to this
writer’s knowledge).

These early
Paleo-Indians are not thought to have been shelter builders. They might have
lived in the open, in trees, or beneath rock outcroppings. These outcroppings
are an easy walk from the Rock Ledge Shelter Camp site. Earlier shelter
outcroppings could have been softened or eroded away through the years by the
seasonally-flooding LeonRiver and other man-made
alterations to this river’s nature. Caves lie at the western edge of this site
in two locations.

The Folsom Culture (9,000 – 8,000 B.
C.)hunted now-extinct ancient
bison, much taller than the animals alive today. These later Paleo-Indians were
slightly more sophisticated in their tool making than the Clovis
peoples. Folsom tips were found in the same area as the Clovis
tips, suggesting the site’s ongoing desirability, or perhaps even a linking
thread between the two people. When I later talked to Comanche Nation
representatives, they told me that their people believe that all Native peoples
share an eternal core linkage. Though it sounded like mystical allegory to me,
a part of their cosmic belief system, the Comanches’ spiritual legacy might
also literally explain the evolution of Native peoples at one location through
time.

The
Plano Culture is represented by Plainview
points, found at the Upper Leon Fulcrum Camp. This culture’s population lived
from 10,000 - 8,000 years ago. The sheer number of these people is thought to
be greater, as many more artifacts have been found. Metates show up as early as
this culture, but were used constantly until early

Historic
times. The Fulcrum Camp peoples widely roamed this
valley as flint scraping tools, several manos and metates and stone cleavers
have all been found as far south as the AlamedaCemetery
vicinity. An additional cleaver was found on the Hamilton Place near JimNealCreek, ironically, near the site of the
valley’s first Anglo settler foothold. Paths of least resistance.

Plano artifacts tend to
concentrate at Fulcrum Camp, but scatter liberally at multiple sites along JimNealCreek, Colony Creek and
the LeonRiver. These people’s population grew
through time. The end of this Paleo period is thought to be the
Altithermal Period. Average temperatures rose markedly. Rainfall decreased
6,500-7,500 years ago, producing punishing droughts. Large game like bison
would have suffered.

A large year-round inland lake like ManskerLake would have been necessary for
survival, attracting refugees from the Great Plains.
The Antithermal may have made West Texas
uninhabitable, scientists believe. If the Antithermal caused bison to
disappear, Indians would be forced to retool, to hunt smaller game along wooded
river bottoms, like rabbit, turtle and deer. This LeonRiverValley’s native pecan, walnut and
several seed-bearing plants surely added to Alameda-Cheany’s allure. Its
desirability probably produced conflict.

The
Archaic Stage began about 6000 B.C. – 200 B. C. A Bulverde
Point from the Early Archaic Period (3,000 – 2500 B. C.) was found at the AlamedaCemetery many years ago. A Trinity Tip
was also found farther north at the cornerstone Fulcrum Camp. More paths of
least resistance.

The
Native’s weapons transitioned to airborne delivery (arrows are shot, not
jabbed). Black-scarred middens begin to appear. There is no evidence of farming
at this stage, or constructed shelters, but again, cliffs and caves are
convenient to both sites.

The Middle Archaic Period (8,000 –
1,000 B. C.) announced cooler temperatures and more rainfall. Bison returned to
the recovering grasslands to the west. Pedernales points were found just north of AlamedaCemetery.

TheLate Archaic Period brought a marked growth of population and
intense interaction. These folks gathered berries, roots, nuts, pecan and the lemon
size bur-oak acorns. They hunted deer, small game, and bison. Refuse mounds
filled with discarded bones, shells, and broken hearth stones formed the “rock
middens” of Central Texas, found in two places
within the Alameda
– Cheaney Box. The dart was their primary weapon. They developed a wooden
device called an atlatl to increase the power of their throwing arm.

Pottery
began to be made during this time, as well as organized agriculture. The bow
and arrow replaced the atlatl. The arrow points were much thinner, smaller and
lighter. Though Ruth Terry Denney mentions pottery in her well-written 1941 A ShortHistory of Ranger, the writer did not interview anyone who found
Native pottery within the Alameda
– Cheaney Box. Anecdotal stories reported pottery finds on the upper JimNealCreek and also southwest
of AlamedaCemetery. Neither were confirmed.

TheLate Prehistoric Period(A. D. 600 – A. D. 1600) fully embraced
the bow and arrow, and pottery. Caddo and Plains Indian cultural influences
meld in this period, just prior to the first Spanish and French ventures into
this part of Texas.
Perdiz points found at Fulcrum Camp could point to a wide time frame, from the
1800 Historic Period as far back as the Late Prehistoric Period. Alba Points found at Fulcrum seem to better anchor the Late
Prehistoric I Period (1250-750 BP).

Fresno points confirm man
a short distance to the northeast, at the large Colony Rock Mountain Camp.
There are Washita Points from this same site, and also farther south along the
Jim Neal.

HISTORIC PERIOD (AD 1600 – Present). The Wacos seem to be in abundance in DeLeon, driven out
later by Lipan Apaches. The points found in the Alameda – Cheaney Box support DeLeon’s
discovery of a sizable Waco
civilization. Any Wacos left behind were surely eliminated by the Comanches,
beginning around 1740.

Indian campsites around DeLeon seem to be of two types –
the first contained flint arrow points. The second contained large spearheads,
hand axes, points with corner tangs, and grinding manos or “squaw rocks”.

Where the Leon and Sabanna merge south of DeLeon (eighteen
miles south of Alameda)
a large “war camp” was found. “It was in blow sand that was originally about
two and one half feet deep but has since exposed eleven small fire place mounds
about two feet in height and three feet in diameter at its base.”

“The major site of the second type was located east of De Leon on the
west bank of the Leon.
It covered an acre of ground and was a small hill so littered with mussel
shells as to resemble one of the shell heaps common on the coast. This site
produced a great many drills, mortars and manos, arrowpoints, large
spearpoints, hand axes and flint scrapers.”

Two professional digs near DeLeon found “Central Texas
Aspect” Clifton,
Scallorn, Granbury and Perdiz points. A second division of the Neo-American
Stage called the Henrietta Focus found Harrell, Fresno and Young Points. The EdwardsPlateau aspect of the Archaic Stage
found Pedernales, Martindale and Darl points. In rough terms, DeLeon’s
prehistoric history seems to mirror Alameda’s,
a short distance to its north.

Ruth
Terry Denny believes that various flavors of Caddo were pushed into this area
from East Texas during this period by early
Anglo settlers. Earthen berms visually consistent with Caddo mounds were
observed at two sites in the LeonRiverValley,
both on land the writer could not access.

Denny
tells us “the Indians inhabiting the central part of
the State when (the) white man was moving West were, for the most part, these
speaking dialects of the Caddo language. They were the Caddos, Wacos, Wichitas, Keechies,
Andarkos, Tejas, Ionies, Adaes, Bedias, Ayish, Towash, Tawakanas, and the
Nachodoches. These tribes were builders of permanent homes, and cultivated
corn, melons, and vegetables for their

own use. Those inhabiting the North Central part of Texas were the Caddos,
Wacos, Keechies, Witchitas, and Towash tribes”.

Denny offers fascinating clues. “The meal bowls, pestles,
stone-hoos, and most of the flint artifacts found in EastlandCounty
were left by the Caddos and kindred tribes. The meal bowls vary a great deal.
Some were made of thin rock which required experienced and skilled hands in
shaping them. Perhaps these were the ones taken with them when they moved camp.
Others have been found which were too heavy to have been moved any considerable
distance. Some times round holes about the size of post holes were found in
large sand rocks or in limestone boulders which seem to indicate the site of a
permanent camp. Some camp sites have been found where it seems that those bowls
were purposely broken. This is thought to have been done to prevent their
falling into the hands of their enemies. Arrowheads have been found in many
sizes and types. Tomahawks vary so much that hardly any two are very much
alike.”

When French, Spanish and Anglo explorers hit this land,
Native fortunes declined rapidly, on several fronts. Though scattered battles
killed both Indians and European explorers, the disease the fair-complected men
brought with them turned out to be their most effective weapon.

The introduction of the horse by the Spaniards near Taos and the rifle by the
French and Spanish helped the Apache and Comanche grow to dominate the region’s
more peaceful Caddo. Comanche hegemony continued to grow to the south,
eventually beyond the Rio Grande
into Mexico.

The Comanches probably beat Anglo covered wagons to the LeonRiverValley by no more than
120 years (1740 versus 1859). The Comanches are thought to have swooped down
from the north (Native roads tend to run north to south, unlike Anglo east to
west paths). Some Native historians believe conversely that earlier peoples
were mixed into the Comanche population. Either way, the Comanches (and Kiowas)
were operating full bore in EastlandCounty when the first
Anglo settlers arrived at ManskerLake and Blair’s Fort to
its east.

First hand, written reports from this fated meeting
punctuate the beginning of Alameda’s
recorded history. Though written in heroic language, and clearly from the Anglo
writers’ sole perspectives, they offer a look at this valley that is hard to
imagine today.

Pre-Comanche First Peoples arrived at ManskerLake
and the LeonRiverValley
in hundreds of waves through the years. They stayed for a while, got what they
needed, then history’s tide forced them to pack up and leave (or be killed
trying). The Native folks who stayed behind are buried here, in cemeteries off
in the woods, victims of disease or other tribes or old age or each other.

The parade of the Natives described in this chapter got the
wakeup call of their lives when “who came next” arrived. One morning many moons
ago, these mostly peaceful people heard the sound of mustang hoof beats in the
distance. Perhaps blood-curdling war cries filled the stilled air. Within the
space of a few years, the Comanche had displaced all who came before. And the
Comanche dug in, preparing for what came next.

Eastland County Museum Expeditions

The Eastland County Museum, on the square in downtown Eastland, Texas, will be associated with some of the adventures to be written about herein. It is open Thursday - Saturday from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Many of the artifacts donated will live out their days in the museum's capable, strengthening hands. Many of the great stories of Texas whisper their way up and down the halls of this almost 100-year-old building's hallways. Come take a listen...